The Federal Government on Tuesday disclosed that people arrested so far as a result of Fulani/farmers clash across Nigeria communities are foreigners.
The Minister of State for Agriculture, Heineken Lokpobiri, made this known during the public hearing at the Senate on tackling the perennial conflicts between farmers and cattle herdsmen.
Lokpobiri revealed that a lot of herdsmen are also killed whenever farmers clash with herdsmen, but casualty on the part of herdsmen are most of the time not reported.
The Minister said: “It is also important to point out that a lot of herdsmen are also killed.
“Most of the times when there are clashes between herdsmen and farmers, the casualty on the part of the herdsmen are most of the time not reported.
“Some kidnappers have resorted to kidnapping the children of the herdsmen who will resort to selling off their cattle to be able to pay ransom to secure their release.”
The Minister also said due to clashes between the herdsmen and farmers, the milk production in the country has reduced drastically.
He said: “Brazil can boast of 220 million cows.
“Nigeria can boast of less than 19 million cows.
“It may also interest you to know that because of the nomadic nature of our herdsmen, our milk production is in the negative.
“Nigerian cows on the average produce of one litre a day as opposed to the cows in Brazil and Saudi Arabia that produce as much as between 30 to 40 litres a day.
“And the reason is simple: when a cow moves from Maiduguri to Bayelsa, there is no way it can produce any milk.
“From what we have discovered from the experts, cows don’t like movement.
“They just want to eat, drink water and rest and give you good milk.
“In Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Argentina and some other countries, the cows do not move.
“They are confined to ranches, grass, water provided for them and they provide the desired quantity of milk and quality of meat.
“It may be disheartening to say that most of the cows that you see roaming in Nigeria have different types of diseases that are easily transferable.
“Because by the time you flog a cow from Maiduguri to Bayelsa, you can imagine the implication.
“We believe that as one of the solutions, we need to find a way to see how we can give some form of re-orientation to the cattle herdsmen.
“It has been contended by some people that it is traditional for Fulani herdsman or other herdsmen to be moving from one place to the other.
“Yes, it is a tradition that has dated back centuries, but the question is whether as a tradition, is it sustainable in modern day reality?
“Is it profitable to the Fulani herdsman?
“Is it healthy and secured for the herdsman?
“And the simple answer, going by other climes, is that it is a tradition, but traditions change based on realities.
“There is this huge opportunity in this sector.
“Import for only milk powder alone, we spend $1.3 billion.
“For diary products, milk products we may spend as much as $5 billion a year.
“And this is an opportunity that if our herdsmen have the proper orientation, they can keep their cows, feed them well with grasses, provide water for them and get the same between 30 to 40 litres per milk a day and this $5 billion will be within the economy of Nigeria.
“As part of the solutions as a ministry, we have consulted widely and also studied the literatures that exist in the sector.
“And we have realised that the best way to solve this problem will be the creation of ranches.
“If we create ranches, we will provide what the Fulani man is looking for.
“The ranches will have all modern amenities so that the family of the herdsmen can also have the same opportunities that other Nigerians have.
“They will have opportunity to go to school, access to health facilities, agro-allied industries that may be clustered within these ranches.
“We believe that the creation of ranches will be one of the solutions that we will put on the table.
“Mr. President has directed that we should liaise with state governments because the Federal Government alone cannot do it.
“And we have contacted 19 states governors and nine states have already donated 5,000 hectares each for us to start the creation of these ranches.
“We had in the past about 415 grazing reserves.
“Out of that, about 144 were gazetted and the rest not gazetted.
“Those grazing routes, most of them no longer exist.
“They have been encroached upon and grazing reserves without grasses is useless.
“So, what we want to do is to do what other countries are doing.
“Saudi Arabia is importing grasses from the USA and Sudan.
“That is why Saudi Arabia does not have this problem.
“There are no cattle movements in Saudi Arabia.
“What they have are ranches where these grasses are provided.
“And those cows are the most comfortable in the world because they stay in air-conditioned environment and produce about 4.7m litres of milk per day and that is what they use to supply the entire Middle East.
“We believe that if we import Alfafa Grass Seeds, we are not saying that we want to import grasses as Saudi Arabia is doing.
“We want to import the grass seeds so that we can plant them in this 5,000 hectares that the state governments are donating, it will create immediate employment and create thousands of jobs.
“There will also be boreholes, small dams, veterinary services.
“We also believe that cattle breeding as a programme is going to be embarked upon by the Ministry of Agriculture.
“We are thinking about how to increase the productivity in Nigerian cows.
“Most of the female cows out of the less than 19 million we have cannot conceive because of the long movement from one area to the other.
“So, we have resolved to import semen from Europe so that we can do artificial insemination so as to breed the productivity of cows.
“This is something that is done globally.”
Declaring the public hearing open, the President of the Senate, Dr. Abubakar Bukola Saraki, represented by the Senate Leader, Senator Ali Ndume, said: “Today’s discussion on this issue must be driven from the perspective that both cattle herding and farmers are traditions that have co-existed peacefully in the past.
“However, with reported rise of conflicts between agrarian communities and nomadic herders, we must figure out ways to resolve the crisis, make available the relevant resources needed to curb future outbreaks, increase and enhance our intelligence gathering methods to make certain that impersonators are not taking advantage of the reported violence for sinister aims.”
